“Against who leads in the polls.” Discourse strategies in 2012 presidential debates

Abstract

Presidential debates are civic rituals that allow a broad diffusion of candidate´s views, as well as learning and civic instruction. Nevertheless these events are held in a media and political environment that depicts political events with elements of conflict, negativity and personalization, that could be present in debates as well. Using Benoit´s functional theory, that sees debates as strategic displays of cost and benefit stances, which are used to acclaim, attack and defend candidates, we analyzed 518 units of both presidential debates of the 2012 mexican campaign. We found a rather informative performance, based more on acclaims than attacks, and issues than image stances, in spite the incentives of the candidates to attack.